Yes, as it says on the tin, this website is probably the worst ever. It takes the piss out of many of the bad decisions made in the early days of web design. A few years ago, even very prestigious websites fell guilty to some of the big web-design NO-NOs that are spread around this site liberally. Surprisingly, we still find companies using flashing under-construction road work signs and other design nightmares on their sites. It is extremely unlikely for visitors to continually return to your website daily waiting for construction to be completed as a result of these signs. This is brilliantly alluded to at the top of this website: “Coming soon: look for it sometime later, eventually.” It is much more advisable to be subtle about this or hold back launch until you can provide the content for the page.

“Rather than aggressively highlighting where your site is broken or under construction – simply fix the problem or source the needed content.”

5 Great Things about this Website

Obviously in this case the people behind this site are going out of their way to create a God-awful website, but what I find interesting is that there are some great strengths that can be noted from it.

1. Great Domain Name / URL – it is relevant to the website, clever and easy to remember; although it is slightly on the long side2. Great Search Engine Optimisation – I wasn’t even looking for this site and I found it with very broad and popular key words3. Relevant advertising – the Google AdChoices provided very on-topic advertising for a simple website designer package4. Entertainment and educational value – the website gets the message across of what not to do when designing a website far more effectively than a static list of rules could

5. Succeeds at its true objectives – upon stumbling upon this website I became curious as to what the purpose of this website was and who was behind it. I looked almost immediately for a website designed by tag and upon clicking the link it all made sense.

The Motives?

Two very clever organisations are behind this website.

KLP Kentucky Web Design – a web design agency. They subtly drop in a link to ‘GREAT WEB DESIGN’ in the “Main Menu” and a link to their agency in the ‘Website designed by’ field that link to their website. They benefit by getting a large volume of click-through, SEO benefits from having sites linking in to their site (twice), creative marketing and becoming a stand-out talking point for customers and others in the industry.

Exploration media group – a company seeking to ‘provide unique websites that target a specific issue, place, or topic in the travel, tourism or sporting industry.’ Well they also benefit from the same as above and “other kewl links” to their business ventures to visit Kentucky Lake or the Smokie Mountains from the main menu.

I’m sure that for these two stakeholders the worst website in the world ever is in reality a great website and that they are very happy with it.